Educational administration theories and principles

Educational administration theories and principles

Chapter 1

A theory is a set of knowledge that is used in explaining the existence of specific phenomena, or why things happen as they do. When it comes to education, more specifically leadership in schools, there have been several theories put forward to explain the type of administrations present, the incentives behind their establishment, and how they affect the learning of the students.

The organizational theory is one such theory that seeks to explain the existence of certain common-place systems of leadership not only in educational organizations but all institutions in general. There generally are two ways of categorizing organizations, that is, a bureaucratic organization, widely considered the traditional theory, and the more recent non-bureaucratic organizations. The bureaucratic organization is the one most preferred by organizations in setting up their administration.

Bureaucratic organizations place emphasize the importance of the rules set in the organization and depend on the strict adherence to these rules by its members for them to achieve most of their goals. This is the most widely accepted system in most schools and organizations to this day. Bureaucratic organizations, therefore, have a firm hierarchical structure whose main task is to monitor the behavior of those at the lower levels. Communication is vital in such a setting, ensuring supervisors and administrators at the top successfully convey instructions to those at lower levels, and those at lower levels quickly pass information to the top through appropriate means. This, of course, has been made even more comfortable with recent improvements in technology. Time, too, is of the essence in this organization; hence there are meticulous schedules and plans in place to ensure everyone is at a particular place at the provided time. The rules, too, work to ensure members act predictably hence making managing them easy.

For non-bureaucratic organizations, members aren’t expected to stick by a set of rules but instead get socially familiarized with the goals and vision of the company. Members, therefore, have personal knowledge of what the institution hopes to achieve, and this connection is what is expected to motivate them to work with discipline to achieve this. The system, therefore, doesn’t depend on the predictability of the action of its members but focus more on instilling self-motivation to do things right. The measures often are taken to motivate people are different in every institution, and these leadership qualities can get depicted in terms of theory X and theory Y.

For theory X, it gets assumed that the worker (to represent those at lower levels) dislikes work, and if given the opportunity, would avoid it at all costs, hence it was derived from this that all workers need extremely close supervision to be productive. It is also assumed that the worker would reject responsibility at any time to follow a senior’s directives. Workers also get viewed as being way more concerned about job security over anything else; hence have little in the way of ambition.

Leaders that embrace theory Y tend to prefer a more casual outlook about work, that is, they are more comfortable with a worker viewing the job as some form of past-time as opposed to a simple means of sustenance. Workers are believed to work better and smarter when they are familiar with the objectives of the institution. Workers, too, are considered to value creativity in their work.

Critical theory, on the other hand, tends to take a completely different view on how organizations are run. It is believes that oppression of the people lower in the hierarchy is a result of their acceptance of the abuse, as they view it as a means formulated for their own betterment. Institutions manipulate them into thinking that the harsh treatment dealt upon them is deserved and is for their good; hence the workers themselves contribute to its prevailing in the institution.

Chapter 2

Leaders in education, one time or another, are bound to encounter conflicts. These conflicts may arise from the different understandings of people on what educational organizations should entail. The other may arise from the lack of agreement on what education is, its objectives, and the most appropriate mode of delivering it to its beneficiaries.

Education stakeholders, in the late 19^th century, due to the rapid industrialization that was sweeping across the world, and the poor living conditions brought about by the emphasis on capitalism as opposed to human rights, faced one such conflict. Fingers suddenly pointed to the education sector, condemning its vague ideologies on what education should entail, end thereby seeking reforms to keep up with the fast-changing times. Hence the traditional vs. progressive education debate was sparked.

Traditional education was the form of education most prominent at the time and is what most stakeholders sought to change due to its outdated principles. Traditional education entailed a lot, but mostly focused on improving the mental ability of a student, and therefore purely serves an academic purpose. Traditionalists view teachers as the vessel of information and students as active listeners, the receivers of that information. It rates a student’s intelligence on the ability to recall information taught to them, hence tests and grading get used. Traditional education tends to treat various disciplines individually and works out a suitable combination of a couple to suit a specific field’s needs.

Progressive education, on the other hand, which many stakeholders fought so hard for its implementation, has just a few but significant differences to the traditional counterpart. Progressive education is viewed more as a social service, seeking to educate its learners in the social and political aspects of life. Learning, in this case, is more wired towards preparing the graduate for life outside, be it in the job market or the social scene, among other sectors. Here, the teacher is viewed as a guide for the students, empowering them to chart their way in the seeking of information, and enabling them to establish best how to apply this information by themselves. This has been made easier by improvements in technology, as information became available in the vast spaces of the internet, hence reducing the responsibility of teachers as the sole sources of information.

This paradigm shift in education is being brought about by the different views of people on what intelligence is. The traditional understanding of intelligence was that it relied mostly on mental capacity, the ability of a person to memorize, understand, and apply things taught. Intelligence got viewed as a quantity that could as well be measured using tests, and while the tests may sometimes be different, they all test the same intelligence.

Multiple intelligence theory differs in that general intelligence is what most tests seek to measure, and it is an inborn quality; hence it is stable and cannot be changed by external factors surrounding the individual, including school. Intelligence was also further divided into several dimensions; linguistic intelligence, musical intelligence, intrapersonal & interpersonal intelligence, among others, which worked to broaden the perspective of intelligence to much more than one’s mental capacity. Perkin’s learnable intelligence theory further supports this by proposing that there may be up to seven kinds of intelligence. These theories seek to enable the education system to streamline itself and change its policies and methodologies to accommodate students of all types.

Chapter 3

Human behavior tends to change depending on the time, environment, and particular situations that one finds himself in. Hence, organizational behavior looks at the behavior of people within an institution and how they are affected by the people and the working conditions around them. Organizational behavior in the school context helps those high up in the administration, principals, for instance, better understand their staff and students. This would allow better communication from the principal to the staff and the students, and at the same time, enable the principal to deduce best the proper ways of motivating staff and students alike, to achieve the institution’s goals.

During the onset of the industrial revolution in the late 19^th century, the need for hands-on technicians in the job market was at a significant rise. Systems of leadership also had to change in the pursuit of efficiency in the now competitive market. This led to the emergence of the bureaucratic organizational theory. The system emphasized the establishment of rules to cater for the rights of the employees, a hierarchical system of administration, divisional of labor based on the area of specialty and promotions based on merit.

The classical/traditional theory views the organization as the single most crucial aspect and the workers as merely a means of achieving the set goals of the institution. Results are the sole concern in such an institution leaving little room for concern over the welfare of those who put in the work to achieve it. A centralized system of leadership is more often than not preferred to guide the rest on doing what is required. Most schools at the advent of this view on organization adopted the same system from industries for their schools, putting a central point of power in the principal and through strict schedules and rigorous curriculums ensured efficiency in a more result-oriented approach to learning.

As scientific principles got applied to new organizational methods, scientific management started to attract keen interest from institutions. It was later modified and became what now gets referred to as the non-bureaucratic system of administration. The system focused just as much on the result but tweaked its methods of achieving the same results. As opposed to the bureaucratic system where the stringent set of rules ensured predictability in the mannerisms of those under the leadership, the non-bureaucratic system took a more social approach. It familiarized the worker with the policies and objectives of the company in such a way that the worker gained a personal connection with them and was self-motivated to work harder to achieve the set of goals. This came to be known as the human relations system of organization.

Later, leadership as a group function started coming to the fore to cater to the dominance of the centralized system of administration. It also got suggested that groups tend to be successful when one individual played more than one key role, as an individual had to take it as his/her responsibility to ensure the group remained focused on their tasks, and also ensure constant productivity. This is the reason for the establishment of human resource departments in various institutions to monitor the performance of the workers and cater to their needs.

Chapter 4

Probably the essential factor in any organization is the interaction between its organizational structure and the people. This is based on the fact that it is the people that form the organizational structure, and for its seamless working, a proper social environment is required. Hence some simple channel of communication has to be created between the people and the leadership.

The general systems theory views organizations as a collection of various things, in this case, the human resource, and depending on the industry, other equipment such as machines and other technologies that work together to achieve a common goal. What this means is no single component could be solely responsible for the achievement or underachievement of the expectations of an institution. Still instead, it is a collective effort of all involved in its working.

The failure of a student academically, for instance, can’t be all down to the lacking intelligence but maybe a collective deficiency of the student, the teacher, the parent, and everyone involved in making the school system a success. The teacher, for example, maybe slacking in the delivery of the curriculum to the students, or may not be doing it to the expected quality. The administration may be doing little in the way of encouraging the teachers to deliver the best kind of service to their students. The parent, too, may not be accomplishing the task of providing a suitable home environment for the student, hence affecting his/her mental health.

This goes to prove, therefore, that to enable the completion of an institution, all its components have to work hand in hand to achieve the common goal of success. Failure of a single element to deliver on expectation almost always leads to failure of the system.

The social systems theory, on the other hand, looks at the interaction of the organization with its environment. It usually gets classified as either an open or closed system. An open system, as the name suggests, refers to a system that interacts with its environment and is the most common of all systems. The closed system, on the other hand, is one that experiences no interaction with its environs and is a rarity as it is hard to envision an institution that requires no input from the outside, nor does it give output.

Most institutions, as said, tend to be open systems, channeling results to the outside and receiving feedback after that. The school system is an example of such, as it takes students and teachers from various places outside of its environs, nurture them into learned graduates that are then released to the job market to contribute to the workforce or create jobs themselves. The school, at the same time, relies on the outside world for supplies such as stationery, food, among others, to enable it to sustain its faculty and students. Likewise, information is gotten through books sourced from the outside or, more recently, the internet, which has become a vast space for uploading information. Open institutions, therefore, tend to be more successful due to the inter-dependence conjured up with other systems useful to them; hence most institutions opt for this form of organization.